The Cubs have made a flurry of moves over the past couple days, picking up and declining options on various players. Most of those were pretty straightforward decisions, but the choice on what to do with Cole Hamels was imbued with a bit more nuance. In the end, the Cubs opted not to extend the $17.8 million qualifying offer to the veteran lefty.
Source: Cubs did not make a qualifying offer (one year, $17.8M) to Cole Hamels. There will be no compensatory Draft pick linked to his signing elsewhere.@ESPNChiCubs was on it first.
— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) November 4, 2019
While actually down $100,000 from last season, that figure was just a little too much after having just paid Hamels $20 million for his most recent campaign.